Complete Guide: How To Choose And Install WordPress Plugins

Colin Newcomer

11 months ago

WordPress plugins are helpful extensions that let you add extra functionality to your WordPress site. They can handle small things, like showing related posts to your visitors, as well as large things, like turning your WordPress site into a fully functioning social network or eCommerce store.

Pretty much every WordPress site uses at least some plugins. So if you’re using WordPress, learning the ins and outs of WordPress plugins is essential to your success.

In this guide, we’ll give you detailed information on everything that you need to know about WordPress plugins. By the end, you’ll know:

Where to find WordPress plugins

How to choose WordPress plugins that are safe and secure

How to install WordPress plugins

What to do if you’re having trouble with a plugin

How to update WordPress plugins

Basically, when you finish reading, you’ll be a WordPress plugin wizard! Let’s get started.

Freemium – the developers offer a limited free version, but you need to upgrade to Pro for all of the features.

Free core with extensions – the core plugin is free, but the developer sells a number of separate “extensions” that add specific bits of functionality

Premium – you have to pay right from the get-go.

Is It Worth It To Pay For Premium Plugins?

While there are some amazingly high-quality free plugins, as a general rule, premium plugins offer better features and support.

Think about it:

Developing a high-quality tool takes countless hours of development. Then, add on the need to offer human support, and it only makes sense that premium plugins can offer better features and support (because the developers can dedicate more time to the plugin since they’re actually getting paid for their time!).

For that reason, if you’re building a serious business, your best bet is to go with at least some premium options because they:

Usually have better features

Offer better support, including dedicated support from the developer

Are more likely to receive continued updates because the developer is making money rather than just developing the plugin as a hobby

If you’re on a budget, free plugins are definitely still a viable choice. Just be prepared to make some tradeoffs when it comes to feature lists and one-on-one support

Where To Find WordPress Plugins For Your Site

There are three main areas where you can find plugins for your site:

WordPress.org – the official WordPress plugin directory. Every single plugin here is free in at least its basic form, though you’ll find plenty of options that operate on “freemium” or “paid extension” business models.

Best Places to Find Free WordPress Plugins

Beyond spoiling you for choice with over 50,000 different free plugins, the WordPress.org plugin directory is a great choice because:

New plugins must have their code reviewed by the Plugin Review Team before they get listed

All the plugins are open source

Basically, the WordPress.org plugin directory is tightly controlled to ensure (as much as is possible) that none of the plugins are going to introduce vulnerabilities to your site. It’s not 100% foolproof – but it’s much better than any alternatives.

To find plugins, you can use the search box:

Then, you can browse through the search results until you find a plugin that piques your interest:

Another helpful way to find related plugins is to use the tags on each individual plugin listing:

Best Places to Find Premium WordPress Plugins

If you’re open to premium plugins, the best place to start your search is…Google!

Yup, the world’s largest search engine is indeed a great place to find plugins.

Once you have those two things, connect to your site via FTP and navigate to …/wp-content/plugins:

Then, right-click on the folder of the plugin that you want to deactivate and rename it. Append “_old” to the end of the folder so that you can remember that you deactivated the plugin:

And that’s it! Your site should hopefully be back to normal.

If you want to reactivate the plugin at any point, all you need to do is remove “_old” from the end of the filename.

How to Get Help With WordPress Plugins

If you’re struggling with a particular WordPress plugin, you may need to turn to outside help to get things working.

In this case, you have a few different options:

Use the WordPress.org Support Forums

We briefly told you about the WordPress.org support forums when we taught you how to vet plugins before installing them. Well, you can use those very same support forums to get help from the developer:

Remember – some developers do this entirely for free. So don’t expect the same level of support that you’d get from a premium plugin.

Speaking of…

Ask The Developer for Help Directly For Premium Plugins

If you paid for a premium plugin, you’ll typically get 6-12 months of dedicated support (depending on the developer’s exact policy).

If you’re struggling, you can use the ticketing system to ask the developer a question directly. Just remember – it’s a good idea to check the developer’s support documentation before firing off a question.

How to Update WordPress Plugins to Stay Secure

Unfortunately, you can’t just forget about a plugin once you install it. Nope! You need to keep the plugin constantly updated so that you can ensure it functions properly and your site is secure.

Out of date WordPress plugins are a major reason that some WordPress sites get hacked. So seriously – you can’t forget to update WordPress plugins.

Thankfully, though, WordPress makes it easy to update plugins right from your dashboard.

Whenever there’s a plugin update available, WordPress will notify you in your WordPress dashboard by showing a red number next to the Plugins option:

When you see that number, here’s all you need to do to update the plugin(s):

Go to Plugins in your WordPress dashboard

Look for the plugin with the update notice

Click update now

WordPress will handle the rest for you!

You can also read the changelog of what the developer changed by clicking on the View version X details link.

How Many WordPress Plugins is Too Many?

You’ll commonly hear people tell you “don’t install too many WordPress plugins, it will slow your site down.” That’s not technically true, though it still is a decent general rule to live by.

See, what’s more important than the actual number of plugins is the:

Quality of each plugin’s code

Scope of the changes made by the plugin

For example, a well-coded plugin that makes a small change to your site has far less impact than a massive, poorly-coded plugin.

That is, to take an extreme example, one bad plugin might have more of a negative effect than 50 well-coded plugins.

So, as long as you’re properly assessing plugins before installing them, don’t worry about passing some arbitrary number of plugins that’s “too many.”

With that being said, every single plugin that you add to your site does increase the chances (however small) of something going wrong or your site slowing down. For that reason, you should still think long and hard before installing plugins willy-nilly.

If you truly need the functionality – go for it! Just make sure you’re not installing plugins for obscure features that you don’t really need.

Wrapping Things Up

WordPress plugins are what make WordPress such an amazingly flexible content management system. Thousands of talented developers have collectively created a plugin ecosystem that makes it possible for WordPress to do…pretty much anything.

At this point, you know:

How to properly choose WordPress plugins

Where to find WordPress plugins

How to install and manage WordPress plugins

Now, all that’s left is for you to get out there and actually start installing some plugins on your site! If you’re looking for a good place to get started, we think the following types of plugins are helpful for pretty much any WordPress site – including yours!